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Winnipeg Free Press

Biggest upset brings huge payoff at Assiniboia Downs

Trainer Bill Mooney did his impression of the movie '50 to 1' on Wednesday night at Assiniboia Downs, bum leg included, blowing up the tote board with a $104.10 winner that also led to a massive $1 Pick 4 payoff of $27,239.05. And he knew she was going to win. The 75-year-old trainer from Montana teamed up with jockey Dario Dalrymple and fellow trainer Curtis Maxwell to pull off the biggest upset of the meeting in the fifth race on Wednesday evening with the 6-year-old mare Ropers N Wranglers. Everyone in the barn bet on her — except Maxwell, who got distracted at the grandstand and forgot to. GEORGE WILLIAMS The 50-1 Crew (from left): trainer Bill Mooney, jockey Dario Dalrymple and trainer Curtis Maxwell. 'I was talking to someone, I looked up and they were already in the gate,' said Maxwell, who was paddocking the horse for Mooney partly because Mooney had injured his leg in a stall when a horse ran into him. 'The race started and it was too late.' 'I had $10 across on her,' said Mooney. 'I got back around $700.' Ropers N Wranglers paid $104.10 to win, $33.50 to place, and $8.80 to show, and knocked just about every live ticket holder out of the Pick 4. The first race in the Pick 4 sequence was also won by a longshot, Ethan's Animal ($27.10), trained by Ryan Desjarlais. In the sixth race and third leg of the Pick 4, last year's Winnipeg Futurity winner Welcometohollywood ($8.20) recaptured her stakes-winning form and won the $50,000 Jack Hardy Stakes for trainer Jared Brown, setting up a monster Pick 4 payoff in the seventh race. There were only five live Pick 4 tickets heading into the seventh race, and three of them required favourite Lab Rat to win for the $27,000 payoff. The other two live tickets — on second choice Burn Jakey Burn and third favourite Cajun Eddie — were both paying over $70,000. If one of the other three horses in the race had won, nobody would have held a winning Pick 4 ticket, and the pool of $121,206 would have carried over to the next day. Lab Rat ($4.10) won the seventh race, and three lucky ticket holders filled their pillowcases with over $27,000 each. But oh, the havoc the '50 to 1' crew caused! The payoffs in Ropers N Wranglers race were also huge, including a $1 Exacta of $598.35, a 20-cent Trifecta that paid $392.20, a 20-cent Superfecta of $1,505.37, and a 20-cent Pick 3 that paid $679.52. 'We knew she was going to win,' said Mooney, who had claimed the horse in her previous start for $5,000 after a discussion with her former owner/trainer Eugene Burns. Burns pointed out that the horse was sprinting at ASD when her actual forte was distance races. Ropers N Wranglers had broken her maiden at Santa Anita for a $50,000 claiming price going 1 1/8-miles on the turf and had also finished fourth in the $50,000 Emerald Downs Distaff Stakes going 1 1/16 miles on the dirt just a year ago on August 11, 2024. Class everywhere, yet she started out winning here this year in a $5,000 claiming sprint on June 2. 'When I first got her, she wasn't really eating that well,' said Mooney. 'But then she started eating and started to get happy.' 'She ran off on me twice in the morning,' added Dalrymple, signalling her willingness to run. 'She was ready.' Every Second Friday The latest on food and drink in Winnipeg and beyond from arts writers Ben Sigurdson and Eva Wasney. Ropers N Wranglers stretched out to a distance for the first time at the Downs on Wednesday and surprised everyone except her connections, forcing the pace from the inside, opening up into the stretch and easily holding off the favourite late to win by 1¼-lengths. Dalrymple knew he had them the whole race. Mooney is a log home builder who trains horses when he's not building, simply because he loves the lifestyle and the horses. He has three horses in training right now. Ropers N Wranglers gave him his first win of the meeting, but she was claimed away from him after the win. For Dalrymple, it was win number four on the season. Maxwell hasn't won yet this year, but he's hoping his one-horse stable can come through for him. Mooney says he loves training mares. 'I just love making them happy,' he said. 'If you can get them happy, they'll give you everything they've got. They'll run for you.' Which was kind of what Maxwell wanted to do after the race, but in a different context—more like running away. Even his sister bet on the horse.